The Fall of San Francisco
by Arsidias
Summary: With his share of the gold, Tuco,  still calling himself Bill Carson,  has lived a life of ease as a businessman in San Francisco. But when the great quake of 1906 hits, the 92 year old gunslinger must return to his old ways in order to survive.
1. Tombstone for a Man with No Name

Chapter 1: Tombstone for a Man with No Name

It was in the winter of nineteen aught six, at the age of twenty-one, that I found myself in the employ of Mr. William Carson.

It was generally known in San Francisco at the time that Mr. Carson had acquired his fortune through questionable means. That was all that was generally known about Mr. Carson. He rarely spoke about his past, and when he did he offered vague and contradictory accounts. He had been on the losing side of the War Between the States, that much I knew. Although he didn't seem particularly devoted to the confederacy.

It was not my job to pry into his personal affairs. Rather, my job concerned itself with his public affairs. I was to be his assistant and apprentice, to aid him in the managing of his investments. In this fashion I hoped to gain enough financial acumen to find employment at a bank or accounting house or some other such respectable business. Working for Mr. Carson paid well, but it was by no means a respectable occupation.

I had inherited no money from my father, but I had inherited his peculiar hair color. At the age of 21, I had the white hair of a much older man, nearly a match for the nonagenarian Mr. Carson. This hair coloring was a singular trait of the Alabaster family and, I am told, the reason why the man at Ellis Island chose that particular surname for us.

From a young age, my friends and schoolmates had called me Whitey. I have been called Whitey for so long that, if pressed, I'm not sure if I could remember my proper Christian name. Mr. Carson, however, was the one person I knew who did not call me Whitey. He called me 'Blondie.'

He said I reminded him of a man he once knew. I was wise enough not to pursue the matter any further. No doubt Mr. Carson had his reasons for being shy about his past, and as his employee, I was obligated to respect them.

For a man of such advanced age, William Carson was remarkably healthy. He could walk under his own power when the mood took him. More often then not, though, I found myself pushing him in his wheelchair. He owned, in whole or in part, a good many businesses around San Francisco, and he liked to check up on them periodically.

He paid particular interest to the bars and taverns that he had purchased, often sampling their product to be sure that everything was 'up-to-snuff.' His favorite, by far, was one on the corner of Laguna and Walnut that he had renamed _The Mission St. Antoine._

"There are two kinds of people in this world." He often told me as he sipped expensive whiskey out of a cheap glass. "Those who got money, like me; and those who want money, like you." The last half of that little saying was always different, but often it was vaguely insulting.

Usually I'd just sit next to him and watch as he relieved the establishment of two or three of their finest bottles. Since I was "on the clock" I did not, myself, partake. I would watch as Mr. Carson sunk lower and lower into another fit of drunken revelry. These fits were the only times Mr. Carson spoke candidly to me, and it is only through piecing them together that I am able to form some coherent vision of his history.

On this particular night, February the 18th, he spoke of a place called Sad Hill. It was a cemetery, from what I could gather, where they used to bury soldiers during the war. No wonder the subject seemed to drum up such emotion within him. No doubt some of his closest friends had been buried on that hill.

He had spoken of this cemetery before, bit tonight he made mention of something new. He spoke of a headstone that only read 'unknown,' a grave for a man with no name. I was not aware, at the time, of the significance of this grave. I was chiefly concerned with getting Mr. Carson back to his place of residence before he succumbed to alcohol poisoning.

Still, in the furthest recesses of my mind I filed away these new details about my employers past: the grave of an unknown soldier, and a man who had no name. In my imagination, these two distinct concepts existed as one for a time.

It would be roughly two months before the great quake hit San Francisco. During that time I was to become much better acquainted with Mr. Carson, as well as his friend with no name.


	2. There was a Certain Grave

Chapter 2: There was a Certain Grave

There was a certain grave, not far from the city limits, that Mr. Carson liked to visit on Sundays. Since the graveyard was on a hill, and I was Mr. Carson's primary means of locomotion, I usually accompanied him.

Of the deceased, I knew only what I read off of the gravestone. He was a priest, Father Pablo Ramirez, 1810-1874. If the caretaker of the old cemetery was to be believed, Mr. Carson had made the arrangements, and paid for Father Ramirez's burial himself. Though the headstone was worn through years of exposure to the open-air, it was still clearly a very intricate work of very fine craftsmanship. Prostrate angels rested atop it, and there was gold trim along one side. Assuming the unseen coffin was of a similar quality, the father's burial had been quite an expensive preposition.

This was one great mystery about my employer. He didn't seem to have any great respect for the Catholic Church, or any religion. Why would he spend all that money to bury some priest? It seemed odd that he would hold a man of the cloth in such high regard. Were he alive to see it, Father Remirez might not approve of such an ostentatious memorial. Perhaps that was Mr. Carson's private revenge, giving a king's burial to a willfully humble man. That was the only explanation I could think of that made sense.

"You know Blondie," Mr. Carson said after twenty odd minutes of silently staring at the grave. "When I was young, not quite as young as you are now, but young, I had a wife, and a couple of children."

I wasn't expecting to hear that. I'd always assumed Mr. Carson to be a lifelong bachelor. I spent a great deal of time in Mr. Carson's estate, and had seen no evidence of a family. No portraits, no photographs, not even any letters. If Mr. Carson had had a wife and children at some point, they must be long since dead. With this in mind, I consciously changed my expression to one of mourning and regret. It's good for business to have the same mood as your employer.

"But who knows where they are now?" Mr. Carson continued. I hadn't expected that either. If he wasn't sure where his children were, it was safe to assume they weren't dead. In my experience, the dead remain relatively stationary.

"Pablito, he did the ceremony," Mr. Carson gestured toward the gravestone. "Every time I saw him after that, he asked about her." He was silent a few moments before finally adding "I didn't tell him about the others."

I wasn't sure what to say, so I said nothing. If I offended Mr. Carson, I might lose my livelihood. Better to play it safe.

"There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend: those who got families, and those who got nothing like poor Tuco…"

I wasn't sure exactly who 'poor Tuco' was, but I nodded in agreement.

"I'd like to find them, Blondie." He said softly, the dull rasping of his voice nearly drowned out by the wind. He scowled, "I knew a man once who could find anybody. Whenever he set out to find somebody, he found him. That's why they paid him." Mr. Carson turned to me. "What the hell do I pay you for?"

"I push the wheelchair, manage the accounts, drive the car…" I rattled off mechanically. Mr. Carson often spoke to me. I rarely spoke to him. When I did, I limited myself to answering specific questions.

"Now I pay you for finding my family." Mr. Carson said matter-of-factly. "You think you can do that, Blondie?"

I was not at all qualified for that sort of work, but I wasn't going to refuse a request from the richest man in San Francisco.

"Whatever you say Mr. Carson."

Mr. Carson smiled. "Good Blondie, very good. Let's drink to it, huh? I buy all those bars, I should have a drink whenever I want!"

I wheeled Mr. Carson back down the hill and helped him into the Silver Ghost. Mr. Carson was one of the very few people to own an automobile, and I was one of the very few people who knew how to drive one. My expertise in this field almost made up for my embarrassing ineptitude as a rider.

Mr. Carson would have used any occasion as an excuse to go drinking, but that night actually seemed special. It marked the transition to the next stage of my career. He drew up a contract for me the next day, or rather he had someone else draw it up. Mr. Carson was not unintelligent, but I suspect he was not literate.

I was to receive $100 dollars for each erstwhile relative I was able to find. I had all of Mr. Carson's resources behind me, including the Silver Ghost and a considerable expense account. Why he trusted me, a mere lad of 21, with so great an undertaking I could not say. Perhaps it was because I reminded him of his old friend. Perhaps he was just going senile.

The next morning was to be the start of a grand adventure. I would gather what information I could from Mr. Carson, then travel to New Mexico, the last place he had seen his wife and children.

If I had not found the object of my search so quickly, I might have been spared the ravages of the quake that spring. Sometimes when God visits us with a curse, we mistake it for a blessing.


	3. The Girl with Angel Eyes

Chapter 3: The Girl with Angel Eyes.

Even in the heady days of the Wild West, marriages had been matters of public record. My employer, Mr. Carson, made in known to me that he had not used his real name for any of his marriages.

Certainly there was much to say on the ethics of marrying woman under false pretenses, to say nothing of marrying four women and abandoning them in quick succession, but since I was fond of employment, I held my tongue.

It was generally known in San Francisco that Mr. Carson was not an honorable man, but I had never imagined him to be the type to abandon his children. He remembered only one name, even that was surprising considering he was long past the age of senility.

Taking an automobile through the desert was a dangerous and stupid proposition, although it was tempting to make use of the expensive machinery Mr. Carson had put at my disposal. Nevertheless, my own good judgment prevailed, and I took the train to New Mexico.

Those train tracks had been like the fingers of civilization, grasping on to the American west and holding it firmly in its clutches. As recently as my own childhood, the world had been a very different place. At the age of six, while traveling with my late father, I had had the bad fortune to witness an actual gunfight.

In those days, men shooting each other in the street, in full view of God, the law, and anyone else who cared to interfere, was not nearly so uncommon as it has now become. I can still vividly recall the two men who had been fighting. One was short, with black hair and a trim mustache, and he wore chaps with gold embroidery along one side. The other was tall, with blonde hair, and he wore a poncho.

Evidently, one man had offended the other in some way. I was too young to understand and my father did not wish to explain it to me. The 'rules' of the battle, however, were simple enough for a child of six to understand. The men stood back to back, each held a gun in their hand. They took ten paces forward, turned, and each fired a shot. Oftentimes, a third party counted off the ten paces. In this case, the black haired man had conscripted a local preacher.

"Count us off padre," he'd shouted at the passing minister. From the way he angled his gun, you could tell it was not a suggestion.

My father kept hold of me to make sure I staid inside, but he had no problem with me watching through the general store window. I counted along with that unfortunate preacher, not knowing quite what to expect when they finally got to ten.

I was not disappointed. Before I could blind the blonde man had turned around and fired a clean shot into the other man's chest. The duel was over almost before it began, and yet the blonde man kept standing there. He stared as his vanquished opponent with his piercing blue eyes.

"Why's he still standing there?" I demanded of my father. "He won, it's over."

My father simple shook his head. "It ain't over." He said solemnly. "Not till the other man takes his shot."

It was a pathetic display, almost cruel in its supposed mercy. The blonde man just stood there, presenting himself as a target. The other man could barely stand, but he made a token effort. He managed to raise his gun, and fired one shot wildly into the air before collapsing.

That memory has stayed with me all the days of my life. After seeing that remarkable display, I became obsessed with the frontier. For a time, my sole ambition in lie was to become a gunfighter. This ambition so worried my father, and he decided not to take me on his next trip out West. I never travelled with father again. He died in a train crash during that next trip. In a strange, roundabout way, that blonde man in a poncho had saved my life, and I didn't even know his name.

These thoughts and more ran through my mind as I sailed past the western landscape at nearly 40 miles per hour. Out of the windows of the train I could see new towns, new train stations, signs that we had put those wild western days behind us. There was no place for bad men in the 20th century.

Albuquerque had barely been a watering hole at the time of Mr. Carson's first marriage. Now it was a genuine city. The records I had to search for in the town hall were older than the town hall building itself.

The name Mr. Carson had given me was Ana Ramirez. And sure enough, after a solid week of searching through the antiquated record room, I managed to find a certificate for Ana and Tuco Ramirez, married in April of 1840. I surmised that the late Father Ramirez had been Mr. Carson's inspiration for this particular alias.

From the information present on the marriage license, it wasn't hard to find Mrs. Ramirez's current location. There was an address on the marriage license, an address Mr. Carson had been unable to remember. Once obtained, it was simply a matter of searching the yellowing town hall records again to see who had purchased the homestead at which the young couple had resided, and from then on it was a matter of detective work.

I'll spare you all of the insipid details, but suffice to say that, by day's end, the majority of the petty cash Mr. Carson had provided me with had been spent as bribe money. It's amazing what information a town hall or an old farmer will give up when faced with a sudden financial windfall.

The Ramirez had had two children at the time of Mr. Ramirez's departure. Apparently Ana had explained her single motherhood by claiming her husband had died. I gave an involuntary shudder, thinking just what kind of man William Carson was, to leave a woman to raise two children on her own.

One of the children, a boy name Juan, had been lost to sickness at a young age. The other, a girl named Maria, had died just last year, and was survived by a husband and daughter who both resided in Albuquerque.

After a lifetime of evil, Mr. Carson had begun to regret one year too late. It would have been heartbreaking, except Maria Ramirez was undoubtedly better off believing her father had died. Knowing the truth, that he had up and left her due to a restless spirit, might have been too much for her to bear.

Still, I had been paid to render a service. When I set out to find somebody I find them, that's why they pay me. A little cash spread around at the Newspaper offices got me last years funerary notices, and the location of Maria's grave.

It was strange, after seeing Pablo's grave a dozen times, to see the resting place of another Ramirez. Of course, the girl had not been buried under her maiden name, and the tombstone read Gomez. I resolved to send Mr. Carson a telegram telling him both his son and daughter had died, and then never speak of the matter again.

I probably would never have given a second thought to the Gomez family if fate had not intervened at that very moment. A beautiful girl of about my age also approached Maria Gomez's grave. She stood next to me in silence for a moment before finally asking: "Did you know my mother?"

I could have lied. I could have said I was the son of some old acquaintance come to pay my respects. In fact, I planned to do just that until I turned to see the young Miss Eliza Gomez. She had the most brilliant blue eyes, like an angel's eyes. Of course, my gaze did not linger on her eyes for very long, and the rest of her was up to the same exacting standard.

It suddenly occurred to me that telling this girl that I worked for her grandfather would be a way of surreptitiously insinuating myself into her life. It was a foolish thing to tell her, but even now I don't regret it.

It wasn't long after that I found myself at Mr. Gomez's house, explaining to him that Maria's father, long thought dead, was living comfortably in San Francisco. Eliza's father was no interested in the least until the subject of an inheritance came up.

Mr. Gomez was under the impression that Maria's father, in addition to being dead, had been dirt poor. No doubt he had been poor when Maria had last seen him. No one knew exactly where Mr. Carson got his money, but like so many other who stood to benefit from the Carson fortune, myself included, Mr. Gomez did not particularly care.

After a quick exchange of telegrams, the matter was settled. I was to escort Miss Eliza Gomez back to San Francisco to meet her grandfather. Once there, we would discuss the matter of her expectations, and possibly a family share in some of his businesses.

Mr. Gomez was, at first, reticent about entrusting his young daughter to a man of twenty-one. He himself had once been a man of twenty-one, and knew exactly what they might do if left alone with a beautiful woman. I explained to him that my livelihood depended on maintaining my good standing with Mr. Carson, and any dalliances with his granddaughter would undoubtedly put that standing in jeopardy.

When it was put into that kind of language, Mr. Gomez immediately understood. He and I both shared that noblest of vices, greed, which can often be counted upon to make a man remain virtuous.

It wasn't long after that I was sitting next to Miss Eliza on a train bound for San Francisco. My mission had been, in some sense of the word, a success. Still, one thing bothered me. The false name Mr. Carson had used when he was married, Tuco Ramirez, sounded oddly familiar to me.

The name kept swimming through my mind. Tuco Ramirez, where had I heard it before? I couldn't be sure, and I paid it no mind. Perhaps if my memory had been a bit sharper, I would have been able to save myself a great deal of trouble in the long run.


	4. The Bunkhouse Boys

Chapter 4: The Bunkhouse Boys

Upon our return, we found Mr. Carson in high spirits. His sorrow for the loss of his son and daughter was curtailed by his joy at discovering Eliza. He insisted we spend our first night in celebration.

Like every celebration Mr. Carson initiated, this one was held at his tavern, the _Mission St. Antoine_. I tried to explain to him why such an establishment was not a proper place for a young lady, but he either didn't understand or didn't care. Eliza, for her part, was delighted to see a hide of the world her father had tried desperately to hide from her.

I wanted Eliza to think her grandfather was a respectable man, so I fished my old valet's uniform out of mothballs and drove her and her grandfather in the Silver Ghost. She'd never been inside an automobile before, and she was suitably impressed.

Before arriving at the mission, we made a stop at a tailor on the more fashionable side of town. There wasn't time to have a dress made for young Eliza, so Mr. Carson instructed me to buy the most expensive one 'off the rack' and have it hastily altered.

It was evident just by looking that the dress had been made for a much larger woman. The cut of the bodice was all wrong; it jutted out in places where Eliza didn't. Still, there was no denying that she looked absolutely radiant.

"Lou, hand me down a whiskey!" Mr. Carson called out as I wheeled him up to the bar. From his sitting position, he couldn't quite reach the bottles up on the shelf. I would never grow tired of looking at that endless row of blown glass bottles behind the bar. Tonight, perhaps, I would indulge myself, despite being in the company of my employer.

Eliza was a popular with the regulars, but not too popular. They were all wary of Mr. Carson. This fear did more to protect Miss Eliza's virtue than any action on her grandfather's part. He spent the better part of the night in a drunken daze.

One thing I can say about Mr. Carson is that he was always consistent. When he was depressed, he drank to excess, and when he was happy he did the same. I had never seen him in quite so good a mood. Perhaps to him, young Miss Eliza represented a chance at redemption, a way to atone for past mistakes. Of course, deep down he knew as I did that men like him could never attain redemption.

While nearly everyone in the was in high spirits, there was one gloomy face. The man behind the bar, old Lou Basset, looked as if he'd seen a ghost. I asked him if anything was wrong, more out of politeness than concern.

"Couple of fellas came in here today, said we had to give them half our money every week from now on." Lou explained, with a worried look on his face.

"Why, whatever for?" I asked, genuinely puzzled. "Were they Internal Revenue men?"

Lou shook his head. "They didn't look it. They said the money was for protection."

"Protection from what?" I asked. If that seems naïve of me, remember that this sort of racketeering was a fairly new concept at the time.

Lou shrugged. "From them, I s'pose. I tol' em we wouldn't pay, and they got awful mad. Said we'd be sorry."

"You did the right thing, Lou." I said. He had done the right thing. No competent employee would hand over half the week's earning to a gang of mystery men who offered only vague threats in return.

My gaze turned to Mr. Carson. In an unprecedented feat of strength, he'd taken Miss Eliza upon his shoulders and was carrying her about the room. Sometimes I wondered if he really needed that wheelchair. If he was at all concerned by these demands for protection money, he gave no outward sign.

Suddenly it dawned on me: he didn't know yet. How could he? It had only happened today, and he'd barely spoken to Lou the entire evening. My eyes moved from his face to Eliza's. Both of them were beaming, he due to liquor and she due to joy.

"Pray do not speak of this matter to Mr. Carson." I said. "It would be a sin to give him bad news tonight."

Lou moved to protest, but I cut him off.

"I am the manager of Mr. Carson's affairs, if there's a problem I'll deal with it. Now tell me, what did these men look like?"

Lou's vague description of the three enforcers was less than helpful. However, I was soon to receive vital information on these men from another source.

Mr. Carson wished to devote as much time to his newfound relative as possible. Is it true, I wonder, that men grow soft in their old age? Or is it just the fear of death and hellfire that compels them to act the way they do, as if a few weeks of good could make up for a career of evil? Either way, it didn't matter to me.

By the third day, he even had Eliza pushing his wheelchair, which made our trips to Father Ramirez's grave considerably less strenuous for me. His desire to spend more time with Miss Eliza meant that he gave me a far greater degree of autonomy. It was I, and I alone who went to check in on all of his businesses that week.

I was deeply concerned to find that nearly every manager of every business had a story like Lou's to relate to me. Three men had come, and they had demanded half of the prophets every week in exchange for 'protection.'

Each manager had his own vague, not altogether useful description of these three enforcers, but by piecing them altogether I was able to sketch an accurate portrait of them in my mind. Once you know what a person looks like, finding him becomes that much easier.

I wasn't sure if this ring of extortion went beyond Mr. Carson's property, but if every single business Mr. Carson owned was a target, it couldn't have been a coincidence. No, someone was specifically targeting Mr. Carson.

Truthfully, there couldn't be a better target for extortion. As I said, it was well known in San Francisco at the time that Mr. Carson had come into his fortune by questionable means. He didn't seem like the sort of person who would welcome any sort of police involvement in his affairs, which left him open to exactly the kind of scam our mystery men were enacting.

Visits to local taverns and inquiries about men fitting the descriptions eventually bore fruit. They were a trio of thugs whose individual names were not known, but who were collectively called the bunkhouse boys.

Evidently they had been cattlemen at one point, and had lived together in a bunkhouse on the ranch. Those were the only details about their past that the bunkhouse boys had ever volunteered, and even that was just to explain their name.

No longer cattlemen, the bunkhouse boys were now hired guns. But the market for hired guns was running dry in 1906, so they'd taken up a new form of business, and become a new kind of gangster. It's amazing how much one can learn in a local tavern when one has a generous expense account.

So the bunkhouse boys had taken up a new trade, and they had decided that Mr. Carson was easy money. Involving the police seemed out of the question, and telling Mr. Carson would only have upset him and ruined his reunion with Eliza. I told every manager, clerk, and headperson at every one of Mr. Carson's businesses to refuse the bunkhouse boy's request, and to hold firm like a stonewall. My orders were not questioned. As far as the employees were concerned, I spoke for Mr. Carson directly.

I would have to force their hand into some more obvious crime, one they could be arrested for without anyone looking into Mr. Carson's accounts or business affairs. At least, that was the initial plan.

At long last the appointed day came. The day the bunkhouse boys had promised to return to collect their payment. If one of them threw a punch or smashed a window, I could have them jailed for disorderly conduct and leave the whole extortion business out of it. I felt quite proud of myself that day as I strolled down to the _Mission St. Antoine_,secretly hoping for it to be a scene of devastation. If mother were alive, she would no doubt scold me for forgetting my bible verses, specifically what they have to say on the subject of pride.

When I got to the _Mission_ however, I was surprised to find both the bar and bartender intact. Lou handed me a letter the so-called bunkhouse boys had given him. It was addressed to William Carson, but as his manager I had no qualms about reading it myself. What I read put ice water in my veins.

One word, written in surprising formal penmanship: _Eliza._ The message was clear. Mr. Carson had not kept his granddaughter a secret, and her presence in San Francisco had given him something he had never had before: a clear vulnerability. She was to become the first strike in a violent war.

I knew that I couldn't allow this to happen, but at the same time I wasn't sure exactly what to do. A million possible plans of action raced through my head, and each of them seemed equally doomed to failure.

I thought for a moment: When would they come for Eliza? The answer seemed obvious: during the night when there would be witnesses. So it was my mission, therefore, to become a witness, and possibly even a protector.

I asked to stay at Mr. Carson's house that night. I forget what reason I gave, probably something ridiculous. Mr. Carson was in too good a mood to say no, I could have given him any reason that popped into m mind.

My plan was a simple one. I would set up a chair in front of the front entrance and stand guard all night long. That would take care of one night. I'd have to come up with a more long-term plan of action in the morning.

One of the more menial tasks Mr. Carson delegated to me was to replace his clothing in its proper drawers after it had been laundered. In so doing I had become aware of something that was essential to my plan. At the bottom of the chest of drawers in Mr. Carson's room, below his woolen socks, was a gun.

It was an old gun, perhaps dating from Mr. Carson's service in the Civil War. It looked as if several pieces had fallen off and been replaced with bits from other guns. I wasn't even certain if it still worked, but I was certain of one thing: it was still loaded.

I waited until fairly late to try and sneak the gun out of Mr. Carson's chamber. Most elderly men tend to be heavy sleepers. I thought I had gotten away scot free, and had already taken my position in front of the doorway when I heard the telltale squeak of Mr. Carson's chair come from behind me.

"What the hell are you doing with my gun, Blondie?" Mr. Carson asked. From his tone of voice I could tell that he was not at all pleased. I was completely at a loss for words. I had hoped to deal with the whole matter discretely.

I was saved from answering by a sudden banging at the door. Far from being relieved, I was terrified. The bunkhouse boys had made their presence known.

"Oh Jesus!" I exclaimed, though I was not usually one to curse. "They're going to break down the door!" I held the gun at the ready, but my hands were shaken too much for it to be more than an empty gesture.

"What the hell is going on?" Mr. Carson demanded. The door gave another shake as the bunkhouse boys pounded on it again. I could stand it no longer, I could feel hot tears falling down my face as I tried to explain the situation to my employer.

"They wanted your money, I said no, now they say they're going to kill Eliza." I hung my head in shame. "I didn't want to trouble you. I thought I could handle it on my own. Forgive me, Mr. Carson!"

There was another loud bang at the door. The wood was beginning to splinter. It wouldn't be long. Mr. Carson looked right at me, his face to perfect image of serenity.

"Give me the gun, Blondie." He said coolly.

"Mr. Carson, you might hurt yourself." I protested.

"Give me the gun, Blondie." Mr. Carson repeated more forcefully. I conceded and gave him the gun. In what was possibly the last few seconds of my life, I might as well act as a loyal employee.

Finally the door gave way, the bunkhouse boys poured into the antechamber, guns already drawn and a mean look in their eyes. In one fluid motion, Mr. Carson raised the gun in his right hand and fired off three shots. Half a second later, all three of the so-called bunkhouse boys were lying on the ground, stone dead.


	5. The Man with Many Names

Chapter 5: The Man with Many Names

For a moment I just stood there in stunned silence. I had never expected to see another shooting, and I certainly hadn't expected to see one in San Francisco. Mr. Carson lowered the gun to his side, and suddenly he looked his age. Every wrinkle, every white hair, every discoloration stood out like a star against the night sky. For the first time since I'd known him, Mr. Carson looked truly old.

"They still do things the old way." Mr. Carson said, glancing at the three fresh corpses on the ground. "That's no good. We can't do things the old way anymore."

Suddenly, as if he remembered where he was, Mr. Carson sat bolt upright and trained the gun on me.

"And you!" he shouted, his tone accusatory. "Why din't you tell me about this thing from the beginning?"

I tried to defend myself, but Mr. Carson wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise. It was probably for the best. I've found that in most conversations, it's best to yield to the party with the loaded gun.

"I know you're young, you make mistakes, but there's two kinds of people in this world! The kind who make mistakes and the kind who work for me! I ought to shoot you myself!"

I winced in anticipation of the bullet entering my temple. Bu the bullet never came.

"Of course, if I was going to shoot you, I'd have done it already." with a worn-out smile, he lowered the gun back to his side. "When you gotta shoot, shoot, don't talk. That's what I always say." He paused for a moment. "Well…I said it once."

A soft feminine voice came from upstairs "Grandpa, are you alright? What happened?" Evidently, the gunshots had woken young Miss Eliza, hardly surprising.

"You're lucky she's here." Mr. Carson said, hiding the gun under his dressing gun. "You're lucky you found her, or else maybe you wouldn't be so lucky, eh?"

I had to concede the point. Eliza would never know it, but her presence had probably saved my life that night. No man, no matter how bad he may be, wants his children to regard him as a killer. Perhaps that was why Mr. Carson had run away from so many families, why he had never used his real name. Who could say?

No need to worry about a police investigation now, it was a fairly open and shut case. Three men burst into a house in the middle of the night with pistols drawn, and a man rightly defends himself. In fact, the whole incident brought Mr. Carson a new level of fame in the community.

Strange that he was once reviled merely for being mysterious, but now that he had openly killed three people, he was celebrated as a hero. I continued to work for Mr. Carson, but I was never again granted the same degree of autonomy I had had during the first few week's of Miss Eliza's visit.

Mr. Carson's house had always been a solitary place, even after Eliza had come to stay. It was an old man's house, and Eliza seemed distinctly out of place there. After news of Mr. Carson slaying three criminals started to spread, something happened that had never happened before: he began to receive visitors.

The first one was a man from the newspaper. Despite this being the first visitor during the term of my employment, it was somehow agreed that it was my job to answer the door. If pressed, I don't think I could tell you what my job under Mr. Carson actually was. After the fiasco with the bunkhouse boys, I certainly didn't manage anything, and Eliza had taken on my former duties as a personal assistant. It seemed my only remaining tasks were to answer the door and to drive the Silver Ghost.

After the man from the newspaper, more came. A little old lady baked him a cake. I dare say the little old lady was younger than he was. That was no great shakes, since by my reckoning Mr. Carson had to be at least ninety. From the way he'd looked after shooting the bunkhouse boys, I would have believed he was a hundred. In any case, he was too old to properly digest so rich a cake, and Eliza and I profited by that.

Eliza and I spent a great deal of time together. He grandfather needed his rest, and so more often than not the task of keeping her entertained fell to me. My first take was to have a proper dress made for her. Mr. Carson insisted that all of her clothing be bespoke, just as his was. That first dress was one of dozens he had made for her. Each was a different color and a wildly different pattern. Evidently, now that he had found a living relative, he was determined to show her off. He also sent me to buy parasols, hats, formal gloves and whatever other bric-a-brac a girl her age could ask for. I began to wonder if Eliza's presence had affected Mr. Carson's accounting practices, with a special concern towards my own personal expense account.

If Eliza had been at all disturbed to see three corpses lying at her grandfather's feet, slain by her grandfather's hand, she kept it quiet. Perhaps the endless flood of gifts was Mr. Carson's way of ensuring this silence. Often I would take Miss Eliza out in the Silver Ghost. To the opera, to the theater, wherever she wanted to go. It had been a mistake to wear my valet's uniform that first night, since she know expected me to wear it at all times, and made the most upsetting face when she saw me in my normal clothes.

It was on one such night, when Eliza was out at the opera, that we received a most peculiar visitor. I had returned to the Carson house to wait out Miss Eliza's show. If I timed it right, I would arrive just at the final curtain call. I was going over Mr. Carson's books with an eye towards my own personal wellbeing when the doorbell rang.

I answered the door, as was my duty, and asked whom I could say was calling.

"Archibald Stanton." The man in the doorway replied. He was a tall thin man, with white and wispy hair. In a way he resembled my father, except for his face, which looked like it had been hewn from sunburned leather. He wore a well-maintained suit that was several years out of date and a cape rather than an overcoat. I say a cape, but in the state it was in it more resembled a ratty old poncho.

"There's a Mr. Archibald Stanton here to see you." I announced from the door of Mr. Carson's office. Mr. Carson pricked at the name. Evidently Mr. Stanton was some old acquaintance of his.

"Arch Stanton!" he exclaimed, "You sure?"

"I have no cause to doubt the man, Mr. Carson." I said with a shrug. "Shall I show him in now, sir?"

Mr. Carson nodded silently. He had the most terrible pallor about him, as if he'd seen some supernatural creature out of the corner of his eye, some dark specter that now haunted his every waking moment. I thought nothing of it at the time.

Mr. Stanton entered the room as if it belonged to him. Mr. Carson seemed to recognize him right away, and he didn't seem happy to see him.

"So now you're Arch Stanton?" Mr. Carson asked flatly.

Stanton smiled. "My little joke Tuco. One I knew only you'd get. I had to be sure."

Stanton shot a sideways glance at me. "I'd hoped we could talk alone."

"I'm Mr. Carson's business manager. Whatever you have to say to him, you can say to me." Perhaps I was speaking above my station, but I was dreadfully curious. Evidently this man had known Mr. Carson long ago, at the time of his first marriage. How else would he know the name Tuco?

"Blondie has a point." Mr. Carson said, nodding in my direction. "He can stay."

"Blondie?" Stanton muttered to himself. Evidently Mr. Carson's nickname for me amused him somehow.

"Only one other person besides me knows about Arch Stanton, and I'm pretty sure he's dead."

"Did you really think you'd outlive me?" Stanton asked, smiling. Stanton was definitely old, but he looked a great deal younger than Mr. Carson.

"Why do you come to me now, after forty years?" Mr. Carson asked, a hint of sadness in his voice.

"Forty years?" Stanton repeated in disbelief. "So it's forty years. I didn't come to see you because I didn't know where you were." Stanton said with a shrug. "Then I saw the name Bill Carson in the paper, I figured it couldn't be a coincidence. Imagine my surprise when I found out we lived in the same town. Thought I'd look in on my old friend."

"It's good to see old friends." Mr. Carson said warmly, his manner then grew cold. "But you want something. You always do."

"Nothing big." Stanton said, drawing a small cigar from his pocket and placing it in his mouth. "You see," he explained, "back when you knew me, I had a lot of money, and no name, but now the whole situation is reversed." He lit the cigar, the smoke was noxious enough to make my eyes water. "You see Tuco, I'm flat broke, but I've got so many names. Joe, Manco, Josey, I've even been a William like you. And what was it you used to call me?"

Stanton gave me a meaningful glance. At least, I assume it was meaningful to him since I wasn't able to glean any meaning from it.

"Ah yes, I remember." Stanton said, taking another puff of his cigar. "When we last met you called me a dirty son of a bitch."

"I don't think you are my old friend." Mr. Carson said dismissively. "He never talked this much."

"Oh, I'm a changed man, Tuco." Stanton replied. "In the old days I was afraid of what I might say, but a husband has to talk to his wife, and a father has to talk to his children."

"Children!" Mr. Carson exclaimed. His voice held surprise mingled with jealously.

"That's right Tuco, children, one boy and one girl. Their mother died before she could give me any more. It's for their sake that I've come to you."

"For their sake?" Mr. Carson said with a sneer. "What can I do for your filthy children?"

"I don't have much to leave them when I'm gone." Stanton said, at once losing his former confidence. "Just my little shop down on Hayes Street, and maybe not even that. Some people came by last week, said they wanted money. I said no and they wrecked my store."

Mr. Carson laughed. "I thought you said you read the paper. You don't have to worry about those sons of bitches anymore."

Stanton just shook his head. "The bunkhouse boys were the worst of them, but they weren't the only ones. There's a whole organization. There are a lot of old bad men in San Francisco, people who can't go to the law, and they're tracking us down and making us pay."

"How many people are in an organization?" Mr. Carson demanded. "I killed three, how many left?"

"Over three score." Stanton answered. "It's more than just a gang Tuco, it's a whole mob of people. They're not all like the bunkhouse boys, some of them are younger, smarter, I can't deal with them on my own."

"So that's why you came to Tuco." Mr. Carson replied. It was the first time I'd heard him refer to himself by that name. No, upon reflection, it was the second.

"If we get organized like they are, we can fight this." Stanton said. "We could be partners again, Tuco."

"And you could leave me to die again, out there in the desert." Mr. Carson replied coldly.

"We're too old to fight amongst ourselves, Tuco." Stanton said insistently. "I don't want anything you have, I just want to keep what I have. Just tell me you'll think about."

There was a long silence. Mr. Carson stared at Stanton. He almost looked frightened of the man.

"I make no promises to pigs like you." He said finally. "Now get out of here. And if you come to my house again, I'll kill you."

I held my tongue until Stanton had left before I spoke with Mr. Carson.

"Sir, I'm not sure what your dealings with that man were in the past. But it seemed to me that he had a good motive at heart, and that he could have been a help to you."

"You don't know him like I do." Mr. Carson said dismissively. "He acts friendly now, but for a fistful of dollars he'd kill you, and for a few dollars more he'd kill your family too."

"Perhaps he's changed since the old days." I suggested. I was taking a tone of familiarity wit Mr. Carson that I never had before.

"You think a man can change that much?" Carson asked.

"Haven't you?" I said. I didn't know the answer, and I don't think he did either. I had to cut our conversation short to go pick up Eliza at the Opera House. It was strange, I suppose, to send a girl out of the house alone, but neither I nor Mr. Carson could have offered much in the way of company, and her association with a known killer afforded her some degree of protection. Still, I was glad to see her safe and sound outside the Opera House. Mr. Stanton's dire concern for his own children had led me to fear the worst.

Away from the cramped confines of Mr. Carson's office, Stanton's story seemed more and more ridiculous. A mob of criminals, organized like an army? It simply wasn't possible. Perhaps it had just been the ranting of a demented old man, and yet it still worried me greatly.

It was that night that the first early tremors hit, and I mistook the mild shaking of the Earth to be a symptom of my unease.


	6. A Ways Down Hayes Street

Chapter 6: A Ways Down Hayes Street.

Those of you who are primarily interested in Mr. Carson may not find this next episode to be particularly interesting. Still, I hope you can recognize why it was particularly interesting to me.

I was going over Mr. Carson's ledgers in one of the many dreary little rooms of his house, when who should walk in but young Miss Eliza. Hardly surprising, since she now lived there, but it was still the last thing I had expected.

She was wearing one of the new dresses that Mr. Carson had commissioned for her. I would merely embarrass myself if I attempted to describe it in any detail. Suffice to say that, even to a man like myself, no follower of fashion, it appeared supremely fashionable.

"Mr. Alabaster," she began tentatively. It's worth noting that to this day, she's the only person who ever called me that. "I shall be going to the theater tonight."

"Ah," I replied, trying not to look up from the ledgers, "and I suppose you want me to take you there." Inwardly I shuddered. The prospect of putting on that chauffeur's uniform again alarmed me.

"Actually, I thought you might like to go with me." Miss Eliza replied. Now this was something new. "I've grown bored of going to the theater by myself."

"I see." I replied, finally closing Mr. Carson's ledger. "And am I really the best you can do? No society friends, no gentleman callers?"

"None to speak of." She said, blushing a little. I realized that since it was my job to answer the door, I would probably have known about any gentlemen callers. Suddenly, like a brick striking me in the head, I realized why Miss Eliza desired my company.

It was simple psychology really. The firs twenty odd years of her life had been a dismal, dull affair. My arrival had signified a great change. I had taken her away from her relative poverty in Albuquerque and into a world of wealth and elegance. Never mind that I had just been an errand boy.

I wasn't foolish enough to believe this was anything more than a childish infatuation, and I certainly wasn't foolish enough to not take advantage of it while it lasted. That evening I accompanied Miss Eliza to the theater, and it was perhaps the most magical evening of my young life.

Naturally, this new revelation rekindled my interested in Mr. Carson's past. What had once been a mild curiosity was now an urgent need. If I was to pursue a relationship with Miss Eliza, I wanted to know if my life would be in danger. I'd seen him kill three men before my eyes because they posed a threat to Miss Eliza. If he saw me as another threat, it would not bode well for me.

I'd often suspected that Mr. Carson had been a bad man in the old West. Recent circumstances had seemed to confirm my suspicion. The real question was: how bad of a bad man had he been? I felt almost foolish for being afraid of such an old man, _almost_ foolish.

The tall white-haired man, whose name was evidently not Arch Stanton, had mentioned having a ship down on Hayes Street. This was the only tangible connection I could trace to Mr. Carson's past, so I decided to look into it.

The play was some nonsense about an Englishman with an American cousin. I could scarcely concentrate, the twin distractions of Mr. Carson's checkered past and the newly affectionate Miss Eliza both clawing at my mind.

I have never been what some might call 'the cultured type.' I was as much a stranger in a playhouse as I would have been in darkest China. I could feel those eyes that weren't focused on the play curiously probing me. My clothes were clearly a servant's uniform, and yet I was sitting next to a very refined looking lady, seemingly unaware of the impropriety. I quietly thanked God that Mr. Carson was a dedicated recluse, else he was likely to hear of Eliza and me indirectly through upper-class gossip.

So consumed was I by the thought of violent reprisal by Mr. Carson that I sought out the tall man's little shop directly upon leaving the theater. An astute reader may note the logistical problem here: that Miss Eliza was still with me.

I told her I was visiting a friend. She was kind enough not to ask whom I could possibly be visiting so late at night. No doubt her logical faculties were dulled by fatigue. Or perhaps, horror of horrors, she had begun to trust me without question.

The shop would be closed at such an hour, but at that time it was customary for shop owners to take up residence above their shops. Even if I had to wake him, any information I could gather on my employer seemed to be of the utmost importance.

Miss Eliza had fallen asleep, her delicate form draped onto my shoulder. It made it exceedingly difficult to drive the Silver Ghost, but I wouldn't have moved her for all the gold in the world.

It was already dark by that time. I was having a time of it, trying to navigate the car by street lamps. Headlights are a modern inventions I thank god for everyday.

I was surprised to see an incredibly bright point of light coming from a ways down Hayes Street. It was much brighter than any gas lamp I had seen before, not surprising because it was much, much bigger.

There was no name on the sign, the fire had scorched it off, but there was no doubt in my mind that this raging inferno had once been the tall man's little shop on Hayes Street. So this was what 'protection money' protected people from. I shuddered at the thought of Mr. Carson's old friend still inside.

The fire department did was on sight, scrambling madly trying to put out the flames. There was a very real danger of the fire engulfing a large chunk of the city. Despite the constant fog, San Francisco had a rather dry climate at the time.

Perhaps disturbed by the heat. Miss Eliza stirred a little. She asked what was going on. I told her nothing, and kept driving. All the tall man had done was refuse to pay the organization. Mr. Carson had killed three of them. I shuddered to think what fate awaited him, and I saw no reason to worry Miss Eliza with that notion.

I considered not returning to Mr. Carson's house. It wouldn't be safe there. The organization was in a killing mood. I thought about driving as far as the Silver Ghost could take me, taking Eliza with me to someplace far away. Of course, she would probably object to that idea, and once I ran out of gasoline we'd have to continue on foot. There were a thousand places to feed and rest your house, but very few convenient places to refuel an automobile. Silently I cursed myself for never learning how to ride.

I finally resolved to return to Mr. Carson's house. Realistically speaking, I had nowhere else to go. I had just made my decision when it happened. The earth shook, the ground split open, and everything started to crumble and fall.


	7. Hell on Earth

Chapter Seven - Hell on Earth

I don't remember falling asleep, but I must have. More likely I concussed myself. I had swerved to avoid a piece of falling debris, and in so doing I had driven Mr. Carson's precious Silver Ghost into a wall.

Eliza shook me awake. On any other day, I would have been overjoyed that her radiant eyes were the first things I saw upon waking. But today it filled me with sadness, because it meant she was here with me in this terrifying peril.

Still groggy, I took note of my surroundings. By some contrivance I have yet to understand, a great deal of Eliza's red carmine lip makeup had rubbed off on my clothes and face while I was asleep. No doubt the paper tube in her handbag had fallen out during the crash. As a result, I looked much more badly injured than I was, although the apparent bloodstains were all vaguely reminiscent of human lips.

I probed at the car door and by some miracle it opened. Even thought it was still the dead of night, the sky above me had taken on the dark red pallor of a sunset. It nearly matched the deep carmine on my shirt and face.

It didn't take long to find the cause of the strange luminescence. That tidy little fire at Mr. Stanton's shop, which had seemed so dreadful to me a moment ago, was now just one small part of a raging inferno. The fire, which would not have had much difficulty spreading, even in ideal conditions, was helped along on its way by the massive earthquake.

Up and downs Hayes Street for what seemed like miles, I could see nothing but a red and yellow blaze. And this was not the only fire in San Francisco that night. The quake must have knocked over every lantern and broken every gas lamp in the city. What few buildings had not crumbled in the initial onslaught were now on fire.

No doubt the fire patrols were hard at work all across the city, but this task was insurmountable. I gazed around me and beheld not San Francisco in the state of California, but rather a state of hell on Earth. I later learned that Chief Sullivan of the fire department died that night, hardly surprising.

It's also worth noting that crumbling and ablaze are not mutually exclusive states for a building, especially an older building. Mr. Carson's holdings were almost exclusively older buildings, to the extent to which a building in San Francisco in 1906 could be considered 'old.'

I shuddered to think of my employer's assets literally going "up in smoke." This led me to think of my employer himself, an even more troubling prospect. No matter what kind of man Mr. Carson had been in his youth, he was undoubtedly old and frail now. I couldn't even be certain he had survived the initial earthquake, and his house was so full of glass and lamps and lanterns that after such a seismic event it could very well be a death trap.

I imagined Mr. Carson's great mansion collapsing down around him. Burying him in a deluge of excess and luxury. Burying him and all his wonderful money. That's when I knew I had to do something.

To her credit, Eliza was not especially hysterical. At least, she was not any more hysterical than was reasonable at a time like this. There was pandemonium in the streets. In the immediate vicinity alone, I caught sight of seven bodies lodged within the rubble, two of them children.

"What about grandfather?" was all she said, but she said it more than once. I couldn't answer her question because I didn't have an answer. The odds were good that he was already dead, but I couldn't give up on him before I even looked, at least, not while Eliza was watching.

This was a dark and troubling time, perhaps the single most dreadful experience of my entire life. But it was also a great opportunity. Every man longs for a chance to prove his bravery in front of the woman he loved. I resolved then and there that I would brave the inferno, the crumbling buildings, and the raging mob in order to rescue Miss Eliza's grandfather. But damned is I was going to do it on foot.

The only reason the mob had not turned on Eliza and I, with our fine looking clothes and our apparent wealth, was that they were, for the moment, too preoccupied with their own survival. In a few moments, the majority of them would escape immediate danger, some through death. But those who remained alive would realize that society could not punish them for crimes committed in such an atmosphere, what survived of San Francisco would be theirs for the taking.

Miss Eliza, a pretty girl in expensive clothes, was exactly the sort of unattainable treasure a man might seek on a night like this. I know that, had I not been the one charged with her protection, I would most certainly have cast an eye to her in that regard.

With Eliza's help I managed to drag the Silver Ghost into the street. I was ashamed to ask a woman for help with physical labor, but I was still groggy from my injuries, and it was a necessity of survival. To gain better footing, Miss Eliza had to remove the very expensive, and very impractical shoes that Mr. Carson had bought for her.

The Bunkhouse boys and Mr. Stanton were the two farthest things from my mind at that moment. All the problems of the past few weeks seemed to suddenly shrink in significance. I began to think of Lou and the boys at the _Mission St. Antoine_, not to mention the friends and companions of my childhood. I'd lay good odds that most of them were dead, and that thought sat in the back of my mind and felt like knot tied twice over in the pit of my stomach.

Not two hours ago Ms. Eliza and I had been watching _Carmen_ at the Grand Opera House. For one brief shining moment, I had been in high society. Now, as if God had crafted a grand punishment for my impertinence, I found myself in a city of endless flames.

It was to the same God who crafted that punishment that I said a silent prayer as I ignited the Silver Ghost. Automobiles were tough, built from the hardest metals, made to withstand impacts. Even if the Silver Ghost was not nearly so aesthetically pleasing as it had been before, it was not ridiculous to expect it to still run.

At first, the engine did not ignite. I cursed, out loud. Miss Eliza heard me. She seemed appropriately shocked, and I was appropriately shamed. No doubt I had revealed myself as the coarse person I was, but perhaps that had been my appeal to young Miss Eliza all along.

A second attempt at restarting the Silver Ghost was equally fruitless. I felt like a fool, standing in front of my auto and turning a tiny crank while the world burned around me. Off in the distance, I heard an explosion, then another. It was unmistakably the sound of dynamite. When a building was too far-gone, the fire department would often destroy it utterly, reasoning that stable pile of bricks was preferable to an unstable tenement. The frequency of the explosions alarmed me. Perhaps tomorrow a good portion of the city would be naught but dust and echoes.

The last explosion I head was softer than the rest. It took me a moment to realize that it was the engine on the Silver Ghost bursting back to life. I did a brief sign of the cross, although I was not too familiar with the gesture and probably did it wrong, and I offered God my undying thanks.

Presently, I climbed back into the driver's compartment of the Silver Ghost, that crown jewel of the Rolls Royce Motor Company, and was surprised to fine Miss Eliza sitting next to me.

She claimed that she was far too frightened to sit alone in the passenger compartment. I certainly wasn't going to complain. In a brief second we were off and away, winding through the crowds and the fire and the crumbling debris. The city was barely recognizable, but I knew that I had to find my way back to Mr. Carson's house. It might already have been too late, but I had to try.


	8. Known as The Rat

Chapter 8: Known As The Rat

It was a miracle that Mr. Carson's house was still standing. However, aside from the fact that it was still standing, it wasn't in terribly good shape. The great glass windows through which my employer had spied upon his city lay on the ground, a shattered mess. The entire building was not in flames, but the surrounding flames licked eagerly at the walls. The grounds were lost to us. Mr. Carson's magnificent garden, the vast hedges, the rosebushes he paid a man $50 a week to cultivate but never touched himself, all gone in mere seconds.

What an unrelenting force, is fire, what cunning and cruelty it displays when unleashed upon the world. By the world, I should say, for it was the earth itself that unleashed this nightmare upon us. The earth shook, and San Francisco shattered. It was a patchwork of fire and glass, just like Mr. Carson's house had become.

It wasn't bravery that compelled me to go inside and search for Mr. Carson. I would never describe myself as a brave man, and if I wouldn't it's safe to assume that no one else ever would. No, it was Miss Eliza's tearful eyes that forced my hand. If it had been mere bravery, I would no doubt have insisted that Miss Eliza remain in the car, and stay safe. Instead I let her follow me in, crying for her grandfather all the while. I could hardly blame her. Her father had all but sold her, and her mother was dead, there wasn't much left for her in this world except William Carson.

The main hall was a scene of devastation. The assorted relics and trophies Mr. Carson had collected throughout his lifetime, once proudly displayed in glass cases, lay strewn about the floor in a sea of jagged glass pieces. As Mr. Carson's valet, I had spent a fair amount of time polishing those cases, and had familiarized myself with every knick-knack, every souvenir from the bad old times.

Eliza was off like a shot before I could stop her, she clambered up the staircase to face god knows what danger on the second floor. For a moment, I was too stunned to follow after her. I spotted dark spot on the floor in the shape of a man's body, and I feared the worst.

Upon closer examination, I couldn't help but last. The shape I'd seen on the floor was not Mr. Carson's body, but his old uniform. He'd kept it in a case in the main hall too, and it had retained its shape as it fell. Although I was by no means "out of the woods," the sight of that gray Confederate uniform with "Carson" stitched to the front filled me with hope.

As a general rule, Mr. Carson didn't like to talk about his past, but he was all too eager to tell of his heroic exploits in the Third Cavalry. His stories were often vague and haphazard, details shifting between each telling, showing the limitations of an old man's memory. He had one particular favorite story though, that he recalled with all the crispness of his old uniform.

How often he'd tell me about the battle at Branston Bridge, how he'd heroically struggled through a days long siege to push on westward. He'd told me of a captain, another man without a name, who drank his courage before the first and second attack each day. In the end, Mr. Carson destroyed the bridge, ended the fighting and saved hundred of lives.

I found out sometime later that the Third Cavalry hadn't been at Branston Bridge, and the confederates that were there were retreating to the east, not pushing west. That wasn't the only peculiar thing about Mr. Carson's military records. In the arduous, ultimately fruitless process of trying to claim Mr. Carson's military pension, I'd stumbled upon a hospital report that claimed he'd lost an eye. So far as I could tell, Mr. Carson didn't wear a glass eye. He might have just been very good at hiding his injury.

Upon examining the fallen uniform, I noted an eye patch tucked discretely under the hat. Of course, how utterly fitting. While lost in my reverie, I didn't notice Mr. Carson descending the staircase, leaning on Eliza for support.

"Hey Blondie!" he called out from across the room. I nearly died of fright. "What the hell is going on out there?"

"There's been a quake." I said. It sounded so simple when put into words, but that quake had brought with it such pandemonium, such utter terror, that mere words could never do it justice.

"The city is burning." I offered weakly. Mr. Carson let go of Eliza and walked towards me. I saw then that she had been leaning on him for support, not the other way 'round. Eliza slumped onto the stairs, near unconscious. Mr. Carson looked out one of the holes where a window had been, and saw the distant flames of San Francisco.

"Blondie, would you say I own about…half of this city?" Mr. Carson asked, staring off into the distance. It seemed to me a very generous estimation, but not wanted to offend, I replied in the affirmative.

"My half is not going to burn." Mr. Carson said with much too strong a sense of conviction.

Before I knew it we were both in Mr. Carson's armory. The display cases in this room had suffered the same fate as the cases in the main hall. Weapons and ammunition were strewn about the floor. From out of the rubble, Mr. Carson pulled out the gun that had been in his room. It was almost an antique, assembled from pieces of older guns that had worn out long ago.

"Mr. Carson, this is foolishness." I said, perhaps a bit too firmly. "You're an old man, all you're going to do is get yourself killed."

"No, I'll tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to put out the fires, get the people off the street, protect my goddamn investments. Isn't that what you're supposed to be doing?"

"There's panic out there, pandemonium, hundreds of people looting rioting it's impossible."

"Blondie, there's two kinds of people in this world. The kind who say 'it's impossible' and let the whole world go to hell, and the kind who say 'no.' As long as my granddaughter is up there, I'm not going to be the first kind."

"If you really love her, you'll get in the Silver Ghost and drive away. Take her somewhere safe." I suggested. It seemed like the only logical course of action.

"Just run away, eh?" Mr. Carson said with contempt. "And then keep on running, one town to another? No, I gave that up, Amigo. A long time ago."

"Mr. Carson," I said as calmly as I could under the circumstances, "the city is lost."

"No, the city is still there." Mr. Carson retorted. "The fire may burn, and we all may crumble to dust, but San Francisco stands unbroken."

"You'd need an army, Mr. Carson."

"Ah, you forget, Amigo, an army came to see us just last week."

It took me a moment to realize what Mr. Carson meant. "You mean the bunkhouse boys?" I asked in astonishment.

"Si. If there's as many of them as they say, we can get the city cleaned up, not problem."

"Why would they want to help us? You killed three of them, remember?"

"Who says they want to? I'll explain things to them my way, the old way. I tell them they got no choice." Upon saying this, Mr. Carson made a threatening gesture with his piecemeal pistol.

"If you're going to kill yourself." I said with a sigh. "I might as well go with you, or were you gonna die alone?"

I reached down to grab one of the pistols on the floor, but Mr. Carson slammed his foot down in front of my hand.

"Oh no, no. No pistol amigo."

"You mean you don't want my help?" I was almost relieved to hear this. Duty compelled me to accompany my employer into battle, but as I said before, I am not a brave man.

"No, I mean you take a rifle." Mr. Carson replied. "You can't soot for shit, maybe with a rifle you do better."

"What about Eliza?" I asked with some trepidation. I didn't want Mr. Carson to drag her along into a warzone.

Mr. Carson simply shook his head. "She stays. Safer here. Not safe, but safer." I couldn't help but agree.

"The bunkhouse boys won't be happy to see us." I offered, somewhat superfluously.

"Ah, don't worry about those idiots. They cross me and leave me alive? They know nothing about Tuco."

"What's Tuco?"

"My name, Blondie. Maybe you better start calling me that, if you're going to be my son-in-law."

My heart skipped a beat when Mr. Carson said those words: Son-in-law. Evidently, in her agitated state, Miss Eliza had told Mr. Carson more than she'd planned to. His non-reaction to the news was a great relief to me, although I hadn't seriously considered the prospect of marriage before now.

The two of us said our goodbyes to Miss Eliza before heading back into that hell. We were the men in her life, we two, I the lover, he the father (or grandfather as the case may be). Though both Mr. Carson and I had done out share of evil deeds, and Mr. Carson had the deep regret of abandoning a family, we three were the finest family I have ever been a part of.

Mr. Carson, or Tuco, as he liked to be called, rode shotgun in the Silver Ghost. The idea of riding shotgun in an automobile would have seemed ludicrous to me mere days before, but now it was a sad necessity.

With Eliza safely tucked away in the crumbling mansion, Tuco and I set off to enlist the bunkhouse boys, and restore order to the city.


	9. The Ivory Sickle

Chapter 9: The Ivory Sickle

The main headquarters of the so-called "Bunkhouse Boys" was not at all difficult to find. A tavern of ill repute on the harbor's edge called "The Ivory Sickle." I was loath to admit it, but it wasn't too terribly far-removed from the Mission St. Antoine. The key difference was not found in the clientele, who were of a uniform coarseness in appearance and demeanor. Rather the key difference between the two establishments was that Mr. Carson's tavern did not have rooms to let. The Ivory Sickle had several rooms on the second floor, and one permanent resident.

He went by the obvious alias of "Bill Black" and served as the de facto leader of the unruly mob known as the 'bunkhouse boys.' No doubt at some time in the distant past, he had been a resident of the gang's namesake bunkhouse. It struck me as odd that a former cattleman, or "cow-boy" as we now refer to them, would sink to such depths of depravity, to robbery and violence and extortion. True, members of that profession were not known for their civility, but they were to a man trustworthy enough to be left in charge of a herd of livestock in the open desert for days on end.

Of course, not everyone who had lived in a bunkhouse was a cattleman, and perhaps I had romanticized the profession in my mind. If I had, I was certainly in good company. In any case, the Ivory Sickle seemed as good a place as any to begin our search for Mr. Bill Black.

Negotiation was not a strong suit of mine, nor, I suspected, a strong suit of Mr. Carson's. However, in light of the current circumstances, if Bill Black refused to put the considerable manpower at his disposal to use in cleaning up the city, he was even less of a man than I thought he was.

A racket like Mr. Black's required civilization in order to function. That's why there were no 'protection rackets' in the untamed reaches of the West. Only here in San Francisco where civilization had taken hold. But its grasp on the American West was tenuous at best, and after this night of reckoning, San Francisco may well have fallen beyond repair. If there were any semblance of a soul within Mr. Black, he would recognize that helping the city was the right thing to do. And if there weren't, surely he would realize that it was good for business.

The trip over was eventful to say the least. The last vestiges of law and order had been burned away by the fire. At every street corner we rounded, a gang of ravenous looters claimed what they could from the smoldering remains of San Francisco.

I drove as fast as I could, over the roads that weren't damaged. However, the debris and crowds that cluttered the streets slowed our pace enough to make us vulnerable. For a moment I considered gunning the accelerator and running over the thronging crowds. It would certainly make for a funny obituary, a man trampled by a horseless carriage. Still, my conscience prevented me from doing anything that extreme.

After all, there people were just afraid, trying to escape the fires and the tremors in any way they could. Mostly, they parted in front of our Silver Ghost, and left a clear path. The sight of Mr. Carson riding shotgun was enough to deter most of them from trying anything funny. I must say, Mr. Carson is the only man I've ever known who could "ride shotgun" with a pistol.

At one point, as we careened down Battery Street, a crowd of angry, desperate men blocked out path. The fact that we were in an automobile made it clear we were among the city's elite, and like always, that made us the target for the people's aggression. As if any person could be blamed for an act of God.

The men were unarmed, but had no intention of moving. One of them stepped to the front. He seemed to speak for the whole crowd. He recognized Mr. Carson, and apparently had some sort of enmity for him. He'd managed to rile the crowd enough to go along with him. Apparently the man was a resident of one of Mr. Carson's substandard apartment buildings, and somehow blamed him for the fire.

The point was that there men had no intention of moving, and they were halting our progress. I suggested that Mr. Carson attempt to negotiate with them, but he had other ideas. He pulled out his piecemeal pistol and fired into the crowd five times. After a brief pause, he fired once more.

The crowd scattered, and to my amazement, there were no bodies left on the ground, nor any trace of blood. Mr. Carson aim had to be supernaturally bad in order to fire at such close range and miss. I made a comment to that effect and Mr. Carson trained his gun on me.

"Don't laugh, Blondie." He said with a snarl. "When I miss I miss very good. And I don't kill anybody who owes me rent."

With that, he pulled the trigger one more time. I supposed I should have realized the gun was empty, but I still flinched. That was enough to get a laugh out of him.

"You mean, you shot directly at a crowd that thick and hit nothing? That's amazing!"

"Eh, it's nothing." Mr. Carson replied. "I know one guy, he can shoot through a rope at 500 feet."

"500 feet? That impossible." I said with a laugh.

"Eh, maybe so." Mr. Carson shrugged. "So are we going or not?"

I stared up the Silver Ghost again and we headed directly for the Ivory Sickle. Usually driving around the city at night, even by gas lamp, was an unpleasant ordeal. However, the fire that night would put any gaffer to shame. Sand Francisco was as bright at one o'clock in the morning as it had ever been during the day.

As if to prove that there was no justice in the world, The Ivory Sickle was one of the few buildings in the city that seemed absolutely untouched. Neither the earthquake nor the fire had left any visible mark on the façade.

Mr. Carson wasted no time. He walked in, drew his pistol, and shot the first person he saw. Five then one, like before.

"There are two kinds of people in the world!" He bellowed at the bars remaining patrons. "Those who work for me, and those who got holes in their head." He waved his gun around the bar. I, for my part, kept my rifle at the ready.

"You the bunkhouse boys?" He demanded. It was so like him to ask this question only after he had killed a man. Most of the members of the crowd nodded. "Well now you're Tuco's boys, understand?" The crowd nodded again. "The city's on fire, and you boys are gonna put it out."

"Why should we listen to you, old man?" One of the boy's asked incredulously. He was dead before he hit the floor.

"That's why!" Mr. Carson roared. "Any man doesn't do what I say, I send him to hell! Go and tell Bill Black that!"

One of the former Bunkhouse Boys, no doubt fearing for his life, explained to use that Bill Black was no longer there. He'd seen the two of us approaching from his upstairs window, and fled.

That was, perhaps, the worst thing Bill Black could have done. Now his men knew he was afraid of us, and their diminishing respect for him became an increasing respect for us. I won't bore you with the details of our other late night raids that evening, but suffice to say that the remainder of the Bunkhouse Boys switched allegiance fairly easily. Of course, we didn't merely take the underling's word that Bill Black had fled. Tuco insisted on checking himself.

After some gentle prodding with my rifle, the concierge informed us that Black was in "Room four, senor." Of course, we checked rooms one through three along the way, and upon finding them to be deserted, Mr. Carson and I broke into room four.

The window was open, showing signs of Mr. Black's recent departure, and lying on the bed was a hastily scrawled note from the man, only three words long. It read: See you soon.


	10. You Know What You Are

Chapter 10: You Know What You Are

The fire brigade suffered heavy casualties that night, as did the Bunkhouse Boys, although that was partly Tuco's doing. The army arrived the following morning, ready to provide additional support. In what seemed like no time at all, the fires were out, the angry mobs had been quelled, and all seemed right with the world.

Mr. Carson received a commendation for mobilizing so many "volunteer firemen" at such short notice. The authorities quietly forgot any signs of the two murders at The Ivory Sickle. Buildings had crumbled and the turned to dust, but San Francisco stood unbroken.

I had never been, nor was I ever again, so very tired. Mr. Carson and I had been out all night and all day. As a leader of the community, it was expected for Mr. Carson to be involved in the reconstruction, but no one had expected his contributions to be more than monetary.

For my part, I had never seen Mr. Carson so alive. He walked without the aid of a cane, and jumped and shouted and generally carried on like a much younger man. For that day, I felt almost as if he were my contemporary.

It wasn't until after we'd helped to set up the emergency aid tents, and after the interim fire marshal and the General in charge of clean-up operations had personally thanked him that he began to show the first signs of fatigue.

He climbed into the back of the Silver Ghost, and suddenly he seemed four decades older. It was easy to forget that Mr. Carson was nearly a centenarian. His breathing was heavy and stilted, and he slumped over in his seat and remained quiet for what seemed like an eternity.

"Shall we go home, Tuco?" I asked when I could bear the silence no longer.

"No, Blondie, not right now…" He said. "I want to go back to that place we used to go, back to that sad, sad hill…I want to see Pablo."

Mr. Carson didn't have to say another word. I took him to the same place I had taken him every week for over a year: the cemetery. We didn't have the wheelchair with us, so I had to support Mr. Carson on his way up the hill. In no time at all we were in front of the grave of Pablo Ramirez.

It wasn't until now that I noted the shared surname between this Pablo and Mr. Carson's true identity. Suddenly I saw all those past visits to Pablo's grave in a new light. Mr. Carson struggled to stand in front of the gravestone under his own power, and I attempted to give him some privacy. He spoke to the tombstone in Spanish. He must have thought I didn't know the language. If it weren't for my father's insistence on international schooling in my formative years, I would never have known what he said.

"Well Pablo," he said in a hushed tone. "One time you asked me what I'd done with my life, aside from evil. I just kept the city from eating itself…I put out the fires…that's something, isn't it? That's something…."

Mr. Carson trailed off for a moment. I pretended not to notice there were tears in his eyes.

We pulled up to the house a half hour later, and it was immediately clear that something was wrong. There was an unfamiliar horse tied up outside, and the grounds were eerily quiet. Suddenly the words of Bill Black's note took on a whole new meaning, "see you soon" indeed.

The two of both arrived at the same conclusion wordlessly. We each grabbed our respective firearms and readied ourselves. There are a very few occasions where having a large house is a disadvantage. This was definitely one of them. Miss Eliza could have been anywhere in the house, and so could the rider of that horse.

"You realize that that's probably Bill Black's horse?" I asked. Mr. Carson nodded in ascent. "And if he is in there, Eliza is in there with him." Mr. Carson nodded again, and brandished his pistol.

"Tuco..." I said with some trepidation. "I've never shot anybody before."

"You picked a hell of a time to start." Mr. Carson said, smiling. "Come on, let's go." And with that, we rushed into the house, guns at the ready.

Our search didn't go on for too long. Almost immediately we heard a piercing feminine shriek from the top of the stairway. We turned to see Miss Eliza, still clad in her gown from the night before, gripped roughly by a gargantuan man who held a pistol to her temple. He wore a pinstriped suit and a bowler hat, and had a scare running down the right side of his face.

"Senor Ramirez!" he shouted down into the main hall. "So good to see you! And your little dog too."

No personal insult could make me as angry as Bill Black mistreating Miss Eliza, but referring to me as a dog came fairly close.

"Come on up." Black said, affecting an affable tone. "Step into my office."

His so-called "office" was a broken down section of the upstairs hallway where the rafters were exposed. Black was ready for us. He'd draped two hangman's nooses over rafters and set one of Mr. Carson's expensive mahogany chairs under each of them.

"One for you, one for him." Black said to Mr. Carson, somewhat superfluously. "You killed five of my people, made me look like a fool."

"You didn't need any help to look like a fool." I interrupted, somewhat unwisely.

"Shut up!' Black snarled, pressing his gun against Miss Eliza's breast. "Who the hell are you anyway?"

I had no answer for that. At that moment, I could not even remember how I'd become entangled in this disastrous chain of events.

"Get up there." Black commanded, gesturing towards the chairs with his head. "I don't need to tell you what happens if you don't."

He didn't. Dutifully, Mr. Carson and I climbed onto the chairs and put the ropes around our necks.

"Good." He said with an evil smile. He pulled his gun away from Miss Eliza, but my relief at seeing her out of danger was short lived. A split second later he turned the gun towards us and fired four shots.

Suddenly the chairs were no longer beneath us. I could feel the noose tightening around my neck, and I swear I could feel the devil bite me on the ass. My breathing became labored, and in a few more seconds, my vision faded, and all I could see was a deadly, silent blackness.

There was a sound of thunder, then another, and another. The next thing I felt was a sharp pain in my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see that I was lying on the ground. Mr. Carson was lying next to me. He smiled, a firm, knowing smile.

"I told you." He said. He gestured to the end of the rope and, to my amazement, the end of both ropes had been burned through, as if by a bullet. The window in front of us, one of the only windows in the house left intact by the earthquake, had been shattered, and Bill Black lay dead on the floor in front of us.

Eliza was still in a state of shock. She had been under that maniac's power for an entire night, who knows what horrors she had seen? She embraced Mr. Carson warmly, and then turned her attention to me.

"What just happened?" I asked, astonished.

"Even a filthy beggar like me has got a protecting angel." Mr. Carson said, turning to the shattered window. "There's a golden haired angel watching over us."

The next few weeks were some of the happiest of my life. Mr. Carson, Miss Eliza and I all lived together, just like a family. The city was rebuilt, bit by bit, until it was stronger and more magnificent that it was before. For one brief, shining moment, all the joy in the world seemed to be within my grasp. But nothing lasts forever.

The exertion of that night was too much for a man his age to bear. It wasn't long before his heart gave out. He went out silently in his sleep, and we found him with a smile on his face.

He left nearly all his worldly possessions to Eliza, as expected. I say nearly all because he bequeathed one very special object to me: his automobile, the 1906 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost.

It was a message, plain as day. It was Mr. Carson's last instructions to me from beyond the grave. Miss Eliza wanted us to be married. She said that we could share the money as equals, and live together in her grandfather's magnificent house.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed, how different my life could have been. But Mr. Carson gave me the Silver Ghost for a reason. He knew what I was, and so did I.

I climbed in that very evening and drove away, and to this day, I have never looked back. No matter how happy I was with Eliza, I'm sure the itch would have hit me eventually. I didn't want to be like Mr. Carson, leaving a chain of broken families in my wake. Instead, I wandered, doing odd jobs, seeking my fortune.

When people ask me my name, I don't say Whitey Alabaster anymore. I tell them to call me Blondie.


End file.
